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Chicken Pudding
Cut up the chicken and stew it a little, after which lay the pieces in a buttered dish with a few bits of butter, a little pepper and salt, and a little of the water in which the chicken was stewed. Make a batter of one quart milk, five eggs, a little salt. Pour this batter over the chicken, and bake half an hour.--Mrs. A. B. Chicken Pudding. 10 eggs beaten very light. 1 quart rich milk. 1/4 pound melted butter. Pepper and salt to the taste.
Stir in enough flour to make a thin, good batter. Put four young chickens, nicely prepared and jointed, in a saucepan, with some salt and water and a bundle of thyme or parsley. Boil till nicely done, then take up the chickens and put in the batter. Put all in a deep dish and bake. Serve with gravy in a boat.--Mrs. Dr. C.
Two versions of the same Virginia dish, essentially a savory batter pudding baked over parboiled chicken — a close relative of Yorkshire pudding. Both assume you already know what a batter is, so the flour quantity is where they leave you stranded.
- The missing flourMrs. A. B.'s batter lists only milk, eggs and salt, with no flour at all — either an omission or an intentionally custard-like batter. Mrs. Dr. C. says "enough flour to make a thin, good batter," which for 1 quart milk and 10 eggs means roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups; the mixture should pour like heavy cream. This is genuinely ambiguous in the original and worth deciding before you start.
- Oven heatNeither version gives a temperature. A batter pudding of this type wants a hot oven, 400-425F, so the batter sets and puffs rather than sitting heavy around the meat. The first recipe's half hour is right at that heat; the second, with twice the eggs and four chickens, will need 45 minutes to an hour.
- "Four young chickens"A nineteenth-century spring chicken was a small bird, commonly something in the range of 1 to 2 lb dressed, so four of them are closer to one modern 4-5 lb bird, or two smaller ones, than to four. Scale accordingly unless you want to feed a dozen people.
- Stew, don't cook through"Stew it a little" is the hinge of the first version: the chicken finishes in the oven, so pull it while still slightly underdone. Mrs. Dr. C. boils hers fully, which is fine because the batter then does all the remaining work.
- Butter your dish generouslyA quarter pound of melted butter goes into the second batter, but the dish itself still needs buttering. Batter puddings weld themselves to bare earthenware.
- The gravyNeither recipe says to make it, but the cooking liquid is the intended base — reduce the strained broth, thicken with a little flour and butter, and send it separately as directed. The pudding is dry without it.
- BonesJointed chicken means bone-in pieces baked into the batter. Boning the meat after stewing makes it far easier to serve, at the cost of some flavor.
- YieldThe first version serves four to six; the second, as written, serves ten or more.
Chicken pudding was a fixture of Virginia tables through the nineteenth century, and it is often likened to Yorkshire pudding transplanted from beef drippings to chicken — an English batter pudding adapted to the bird that was actually available on a Southern farm. Mary Randolph gave a version in The Virginia House-Wife (1824). Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) is a compilation of contributions from housekeepers across the state, often identified only by initials, which is why two versions sit side by side here without comment: the editor, Marion Cabell Tyree, printed what she was sent, and readers were expected to pick. The pairing is useful evidence of how loosely such recipes circulated — one cook remembers the proportions and forgets the flour, the other specifies thyme or parsley and a gravy boat.